Donald Trump’s big mouth just turned Mike Pence’s disappearing act into even more of a scandal

| 10:56 pm EDT July 5, 2019
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On Tuesday morning, the White House claimed that Mike Pence’s flight to New Hampshire had been turned around for security reasons. Then as the day went on, the White House claimed that Pence had never left the White House. Then, even as no one could figure out where Pence was or why, the White House bizarrely announced that the whole thing had nothing to do with any health issues.

Things took a turn for the strange when Mike Pence’s spokesman announced on Wednesday that it would be a couple weeks before anyone could publicly reveal the real reason Pence didn’t make it to New Hampshire. This gave away that a coverup was underway, because if this were some legitimate security issue that couldn’t be revealed yet for investigative reasons, no one involved would be able to already predict that it’ll take weeks to get to the bottom of it. Now Donald Trump has opened his mouth and made the whole thing more of a mess.

Trump told reporters today that the reason for Pence’s disappearing act could take weeks to be revealed. Good for Trump; he stuck to the talking point he’d been fed. But then Trump said that the whole thing happened because “there was a very interesting problem that they had in New Hampshire.” Uh, interesting? If you’re trying to cover up a scandal by announcing you have to keep it a secret for a couple weeks, in the hope that by then the media and the public will have forgotten about it, “interesting” is the last word you’d use to describe it.

Donald Trump also claimed that Mike Pence’s disappearing act had nothing to do with the White House, and that it was due to a problem in New Hampshire, according to USA Today. But in no way is any of that compatible with Team Pence’s claim that the reason for the delay has to remain secret for weeks to come. Congrats, Trump, you just made Pence’s scandal bigger.